Social Darwinism Statement of the Issue Beginning

Social Darwinism

Statement of the Issue

Beginning with a discussion of Social Darwinism's inherent logical fallacy, this study examines whether or not wealthy industrialists of the nineteenth century actually practiced what Social Darwinism called for. By considering the history of the concept and its relation to capitalism, it becomes clear that not only did wealthy industrialists practice Social Darwinism, but that they embraced it precisely because it provided a justification for the unethical business practices they were already engaged in.

Statement of the Issue

Social Darwinism was a major force in the political, economic, and social landscape of the nineteenth and early twentieth century, but it represents something of a conundrum for the historian attempting to determine whether or not the wealthy industrialists who were proponents of Social Darwinism actually practiced what they preached. The difficulty stems from the fact that Social Darwinism is itself an example of a formal fallacy, namely, the appeal to nature. In short, proponents of Social Darwinism argued that because nature demonstrates evolution through natural selection resulting in a kind of "survival of the fittest," this necessarily means that the same kind of ruthless competition is the ideal form of social organization, because it supposedly "leads to both material and social progress" (Bannister, 1993, p. 115, Klein, 2003, p. 387). This is an invalid argument because whether or not something exists in nature has no bearing on whether it is moral, immoral, or good or bad at achieving a specific goal. That there is "an obvious analogy between competition in biological and economic systems" has no bearing on whether or not the latter is desirable, and in fact, history has shown that the encouragement of this form of competition in society does not lead to social progress, but rather encourages social deterioration and reduces material progress for all but the most powerful (Orr, 2009, p. 767). Thus, because it has no logically sound justification, one cannot help but regard Social Darwinism as a kind of pseudo-intellectual justification for the excesses and social ills created and perpetuated by the wealthy industrialists who proposed it. In turn, the question of whether or not wealthy industrialists practiced what they preached becomes more a question of whether or not they acted in their own interest at the expense of the less powerful, and in this regard, the answer in unequivocally yes. However, this does not mean that one need not consider the question more deeply, because the legacy of Social Darwinism continues to have resonance to this day.

Analysis

Though not called Social Darwinism until much later, the collection of ideas regarding the social application of "survival of the fittest" emerged near the end of the nineteenth century, as Darwin's theory of evolution was permeating the public consciousness (Bannister, 1993, p. 4). To begin, it is worth noting that a number of historians and apologists maintain the position that while "it is true that in the last half of the 19th century great numbers of Americans were ideologically committed to the notions of competitions, merited success, and deserved failure […] it is not true that this commitment was grounded on Darwinian premises" (Wilson qtd. In Bannister, 1993, p. 7). This position essentially attempts to separate wealthy industrialists like Andrew Carnegie or John D. Rockefeller from the now-pejorative term Social Darwinism, but it does so by confusing the order of things. Put simply, Social Darwinism was not the basis for capitalist beliefs regarding competition, exploitation, and social disregard, but rather a justification for it after the fact. In this sense, it does not matter if certain wealthy industrialists explicitly supported Social Darwinism, because regardless of their specific statements, Social Darwinism supported them.

Secondly, it is important to note that Social Darwinism did not constitute a widely-accepted mode of social thought, but rather the extreme arguments that, while likely not convincing a majority of the population, nevertheless shifted the boundaries of acceptable rhetoric towards notions of survival and competition, rather than cooperation and development. For the most part, "social Darwinism was nasty business and was recognized as such" by the public, but it nevertheless provided some cover for those industrialists who might want to justify their success at the expense of the poor and politically powerless by appealing to supposedly "natural" laws or phenomenon (Bannister, 1993, p. 10). In the same way that later applications of Social Darwinism would provide pseudo-scientific cover for eugenics and genocide, so too did the Social Darwinism of the later nineteenth century provide cover for the appalling treatment of laborers during the Industrial Revolution.

From here, one may begin to consider how wealthy industrialists of the nineteenth century most certainly did practice Social Darwinism, regardless of whether or not they explicitly preached it themselves. The history of the Industrial Revolution is a history of exploitation and abuse of the politically and economically weak in the service of the already-powerful, and to argue otherwise is to engage in a form of historical revision so blatant as to border on delusion. That the public, or at least public commentators, recognized this is evidenced in the political cartoons and literary jeremiads directed against wealthy industrialists and their political lackeys, from Rockefeller and Carnegie to Boss Tweed in Tammany Hall. In the latter half of the nineteenth century, these men, and others like them, were portrayed, either explicitly or implicitly, as powerful animals (such as lions, tigers, or octopuses), because their "primitive strength and violent nature were already pervasive in the human imagination" (Teorey, 2006, p. 47). Taking a cue from the proponents of Social Darwinism themselves, editorial cartoonists and muckraking authors portrayed wealthy industrialists as violent animals in order to demonstrate how their business practices and political influence represented the imposition of a violent, cruel form of natural selection onto the otherwise developing social world. Rather than recognizing that "surviving and surviving well […] require that competition takes place within a cooperative context," these industrialists imagined themselves animalistic kings, whose political and economic power was legitimated purely through their use of force, whether that force was economic, or in many cases physical (Klein, 2003, p. 397).